


There Is A Crack In Everything (That's How The Light Gets In)

by grayspider1974



Category: Vikings - Fandom
Genre: Atonement - Freeform, Frigidity, Other, Regret, sexual disillusionment, urban squalor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-07 12:25:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14671059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayspider1974/pseuds/grayspider1974
Summary: In which Torvig realizes that the only person she's ever loved was her son, and that sometimes you have to give back to the world rather than simply taking from it.





	1. Dance Me To The End of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Blotmath, or "blood moon" was in late October or early November, when the animals were slaughtered and a feast not unlike Thanksgiving was held  
> The Norse did not actually wear the familiar winged or horned helmet (which has its origins on the Wagnerian stage and in Victorian art) but Saami and Siberian shamans traditionally wear caps adorned with feathers and fur lappets.

"I am now convinced," said the shade of Ragnar Lothbrook "that Lagertha is the stupidest woman in all Norway. I set things up so that Bjorn would be king, but she went and did all this..." He swept his arms across the field of carnage. "This is a total shit storm!"  
"That is the understatement of the year, said the shade of Aslaug Krauka, which up until five minutes ago had been preparing for her next incarnation inside Astrid's womb. "Now how am I supposed to help Ivar come to terms with his real enemy, the little bastard your priest fathered on that daft English woman, or even keep his sanity? Now all my boys are at each other's throats, and that stupid twat and her giant idiot son are the cause of it."  
"Don't blame Bjorn for being a good boy who loves his mother as much as your son loves you....and really, you should have kept Ivar in line a bit better!"  
"And you should have taught your eldest son to keep it in his pants," snapped Aslaug. "Or at least keep that Torvig creature off his pole. What were you thinking, letting him bed the widow of your worst rival?"  
"Torvig was not my idea," said Ragnar. "I picked out a lovely wife for my son, but Lagertha hates her. She likes Torvig." A Valkyrie was approaching, but he waved her off and showed her the cross that had belonged to Aethelstan. She scowled and rode off in disgust.  
"Damn right," said Aslaug. "Of course, she also liked Astrid so much that she killed her, and killed me for a second time in the process, but when a woman in her mid forties dallies with a girl who is young enough to be her daughter, one might EXPECT the girl to have it off with someone else, usually someone with a prick...or in Astrid's case, several people with pricks. She was probably already pregnant when she left Kattegat, because she was already showing a month or so after Harald and his buddies nabbed her, so she was probably impregnated the previous Blotmath."  
"Bjorn may not be the sharpest arrow in the quiver," said Ragnar "but he seldom misses. I told his mother to keep her girlfriend off of her son's pole, but she didn't take the hint."  
"You should have grabbed Lagertha by the neck and yelled 'she's his half sister!'" Aslaug said, and shrugged. In spirit form, she wore a long black robe that fluttered like a raven's wings when she did this. "Bjorn's not the only one who couldn't keep it in his pants!"  
"She could have been Rollo's," said Ragnar "We were both stepping out with Uma while Lagertha was pregnant with Bjorn."  
"All the samen," said Aslaug "He should have been taught to keep it in his pants better, or at least been married off sooner, and so should all of my sons."  
She was interrupted by the arrival of a small woman riding an albino reindeer. The girl had silver grey eyes and wore high boots of leather trimmed with fur, and her neck and wrists were adorned with necklaces and bracelets of ivory, amber, wood and shell and strapped to her back was a zither-like instrument known as a kantele. "Hueva baiva, y'all..." said Kyllikylli Taapiolan. "From the looks of things, I missed most of the battle!"  
"No, duh..." said Ragnar. "What took you so long?"  
"I just rode all the way from Riga on the back of a reindeer," Kylli said. "It was not exactly an easy ride, but Bjorn said go rally the Brute Squad and call them back to Kattegat, so that is precisely what I did. There's a thousand of his loyal employees on the march, and they should be here shortly..." The sound of many voices singing The Song of Barack in unison drifted on the breeze. "they're lead by Barack Cohen, whose father said that this was either the bravest thing that any Jew has done since the Bar Kohkba Revolt, or the stupidest."  
"Most likely, it was the stupidest..." said the shade of Ragnar Lothbrook. "But I see you found time for a shopping trip when you were in Byzantium."  
Kylli's eyes gleamed like two dinars dropped down a well. "When this is done, I'm probably going to need a new pair of boots, but I also bought myself a new hat because if I'm gonna die I might as well be well dressed!"

The Varangians swept down on Kattegat and caught the remainder of Hvitserk and Ivar's troops off guard, and Kyllikyll Taapiolan rode among them like a small but exceedingly noisy White Death dressed in full shamanic gear that included a hat which included what looked like an entire dead dove perched on top and ermine pelts trailing behind like long, flapping ears. The effect would have been dazzling when he put it on, then terrifying after she had gotten splattered with mud and blood, and then after the hat had caught fire and she had had to yank it off and throw it in someone's horse trough to put it out she looked completely ludicrous. "Perkale," she muttered. The taxidermist had probably preserved the skins and feathers in something highly flammable, because the thing had gone up like a Midsummer's Eve bonfire and burnt off most of her hair. "And it's a good thing I bought new boots because the old ones are ruined."  
At that point, Torvig poked her head out from behind a stack of barrels.  
"It's about time I found you!" Kylli snapped. "The Stella's out past the mouth of the fjord, but the outriggers can't stay for long. Mount up, troglodyte!"  
Torvig stared up at her blankly.  
"It means 'cave dweller'" said Kylli. "C'mon, my brothers got your children on board already....well, except for Guthram. He's twittering around me as I speak, and your first husband is trying to explain to him that he is dead and should go to Valhalla.  
"Guthram?" Torvig asked. "Guthram, you go with your father, sweetie..."  
"He ain't listenin'," said Kylli. Then in a huskier voice she said "For the love of Odin, Torvig...why did you have to sleep with Ragnar's idiot son? Maybe I wasn't the perfect husband, but I never hurt you, did I? And now our boy is dead..."  
Torvig looked like she was ready to cry.  
"Yes, he's here...and so is your other husband, the one you shot."  
"Frig," said Torvig as she allowed Kylli to hoist her onto the reindeer's back. "I never even considered that possibility."  
Kylli smirked, and clicked her tongue "If I were you I'd consider converting to Christianity, just to avoid all your deceased family members in Valhalla!"


	2. Like A Drunk In A Midnight Choir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Stella Libertas sets sail for Byzantium, Bjorn gets soused and Torvig learns that it is possible to be terribly unhappy even when you've got everything you could possibly want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Gaelic word "Selkie" is most likely derived from the Latin word "selacchid", meaning "seal"  
> "gynaceum" is Greek for what in later Ottoman society was called a harem.

Torvig was hustled on board the Stella Libertas by strange foreigners with dark skins and flashing teeth, and saw Queen Lagertha surrounded by a knot of a different sort of foreigner with freckled skin, hair the colour of autumn leaves and what looked liked webbed hands and feet. One of the latter group tried to speak to her in an alien-sounding language, and blinked not one but two sets of eyelids. "What are you?" she asked in Norwegian.  
"Mi familia," said a very tall woman whose enormous pregnant bulk was swathed in green velvet. "Ecce Selacchi!" She had a fulvous mass of hair the colour of cinnamon, upon which was perched a crown set with pearls and Roman shell cameos, and heavy red gold torques hung around her wrists and neck. She had an oval, freckled face with a very slight underbite, and had her arm around Bjorn's shoulders. Bjorn sat with his head bowed and tears streaming down his face, and held a blood soaked mass that had been his third wife's little blue hat in his hands, but the look in his eyes was so cold that Torvig was reminded of his nasty, gimp little half-brother Ivar.  
"Well, at least you survived, Torvig" Bjorn said. "Mother will be pleased."  
"Aren't you pleased too? Torvig asked.  
"As my mistress and the mother of some of his offspring, you are entitled to the same protection and financial benefits as my wives," he said in a flat voice. A slim woman in a severe grey dress and a yashmak scaled the ladder from below decks. "I believe you've met Thorunn before, and I would like to introduce you to Bellona as well." The red-haired lady stood, bobbed a curtsey and sat down in a billowing mass of green velvet. "This must be painfully awkward for you," Bjorn continued. "Has anyone explained your legal status to you?"  
"N...no..." Torvig said in a small voice.  
"It's not at all easy," said Bjorn. "In the Byzantine Empire, a man is legally required to feed, house and protect the mothers of his children. Properly speaking, Thorunn and Bellona are my wives, as was Snafrid, even though she died about a month after I married her...but legally speaking, you are not now and have never been my wife. I take responsibility for you and your children and will continue to provide for you, but I feel no love for you at all."  
The hot rage that bubbled up inside Torvig's chest was dulled by a mental voice that sounded curiously like her son Guthram. "Well to tell the truth, Mother...did you ever genuinely love him anyway?" Torvig thought back a bit to the time ten years ago when Bjorn came to her. Thorunn had been pregnant and gravely ill, and had refused to come to his bed, and the big horny brute had been like a lost puppy. Once Bjorn had fallen into her lap, Torvig had had all the money and power she had ever wanted, even though she had not liked having his enormous bulk sweating away on top of her half the night...to tell the truth, sex generally left her cold both with men and with women. She had learned how to get men to do what she wanted by dangling sex in front of their noses when she was barely past puberty, and it was even easier to do it with other women. Bjorn's mother had done the same to gain her Earldom, despite her claims of being a great shield wife.Indeed, it had been a bit sickening to hear Lagertha whine about how she had been betrayed by all the men she had slept with, but Torvig had gritted her teeth and told the old bitch that she was right, that Aslaug must have seduced Ragnar with some sort of spell and that she was beautiful and powerful and the undisputed Queen of Norway despite the fact that any idiot would know that a woman lost all legal claim to her husband's property if she left him for someone else's bed, and that Bjorn's claim was split equally with those of his brothers. In fact, a person who genuinely cared for Lagertha would have told her the truth, and had Torvig done so the Earless would not have tried to take the crown and Guthram might still be alive. Torvig had to admit that she had loved Guthram more than anyone, even her surviving children. She let out a roar of grief and sprang at Thorunn, battering away with her fists and screaming "You did this! You did this, you conniving bitch! I'm gonna tear out your throat!" but as she was peeled off and hauled away by two hulking Selkies and one of them wordlessly handed Torvig his handkerchief, the voice in head remarked calmly. "No, Mother...you did all this to yourself!"

The voyage from Norway to Byzantium was long, and Torvig was miserable the whole time because she hated the strange, greasy foreigners who comprised the crew, hated Bjorn's wives and hated Bjorn for refusing to speak to her, though he had given her and her children the Stella Libertas' second stateroom, which adjoined the Captain's Quarters. She would lie awake at night and listen to Bjorn bawl and feel no sympathy for him at all, and during the day he was irritable and often shamefully drunk Indeed, the one incident of note was when Bjorn had suddenly come up on deck drunk off his ass and not wearing his trousers in the middle of the Customs and Immigration inspection at the Strait of Gibraltar. On arrival in Constantinople, Torvig had been shown to her room, which was clean and airy and painted a bright yellow with a pattern of trailing vines and overlooked a small courtyard with orange trees growing in it. "This was the part of the gynaeceum reserved for concubines and secondary wives. I thought it would be awkward if you were in the same suite of rooms that I share with Bjorn and Bellona, but Lagertha is across the courtyard from you. It was a pretty room, and far more luxurious than any room in Kattegat, but Torvig was in a terrible funk and stayed that way even though she and her children now had everything she had ever wanted...indeed, there were things that Torvig had never even known existed. She had always loved fine clothes and jewels and pretty things and lying in a bed with clean sheets and listening to the sounds of birds and smelling the blossoming orange trees in the courtyard was pleasant, and it was explained to her that if she wished the curly-haired girl who did her hair and nails would attend to her more personal needs as well...but on the whole, Torvig was miserable, and although she only saw Bjorn and his wives at meal times (Bjorn had taken to eating gluttonously as well as drinking heavily and was getting fat) every time Torvig saw him at the dinner table flanked by Thorunn and that enormous red-haired Caledonian bitch she privately wished that she still had her crossbow. "You shot the wrong man, Torvig" said the voice in her head, which at this point sounded like her second husband Erlander. "You're not just a whore, you're a stupid whore!" Although she knew the voice in her head was right, she told it to shut up.   
One day, Bjorn looked up from the massive platter before him, where he had devoured two thirds of a roast suckling pig. His eyes were as blue as the Mediterranean Sea, as his father's eyes had been. "Torvig," he said "there is someone you should meet." He wiped the grease from his chin with the tablecloth, as polite people had done there since Roman times, and a slave brought him a silver bowl with mint leaves floating in it with which to wash his hands and another slave entered with a tray of sliced melon and fresh figs. Bjorn crammed three of the latter in his mouth and chewed for a bit. "You're not happy Torvig. I can tell."  
Torvig shrugged. "You always say that happiness means nothing," she said.  
Bjorn smiled and waggled his finger. He really looked like his father. "That depends on whose happiness you're talking about!" he said, and popped another fig in his mouth.


	3. Love Is Not A Victory March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Torvig first encounters Sister Peg, and contemplates how truly unattractive Bjorn has become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are many Sacred Wells in Britain and France that were once sacred to various pre-Christian Celtic or Roman goddesses that were later associated with the Virgin Mary or with various saints and were pilgrimage sites, and the Walsingham Well was one of the most famous in England until the foundation of the Anglican Church led to the end of such practices.

Torvig found out who Bjorn was talking about shortly thereafter. There had been an incident earlier that day that had caused the cleaning staff to go into hysterics and run back and forth weeping and muttering "muy mala, muy muy mala..." under their breath as they ran back and forth. Torvig crossed the courtyard to see Lagertha, but met Bjorn outside his mother's room. His hair was coming out of its plaits and his breath smelled as though he had been hitting the sauce again, and there were streaks of blood on his kaftan.  
"For Frig's sake, Bjorn!" Torvig said."Our children are awake. They should not see you in this state."   
Bjorn nodded.  
"Whose blood is that?" Torvig asked.  
"It's Mother's," Bjorn answered flatly, though his eyes were red and puffy as though he had just finished crying. "She tried to take her own life, but it seems she has a guardian angel who won't let her die. It's best you keep the children away from their grandmother for a few days, because she...well, her mind is not what it was. Ah, hullo, Peg..." The doors to Lagertha's room swung open, and a small nun whose surplice was streaked with gore bustled out. "Torvig, this is the person I was hoping you'd meet, Sister Peg. She is a very wise and pious individual, and she's wandered the world for many years."  
"I won't shake your hand until I've washed mine," said Peg. "They're covered in blood, though that little Karelian witchycuckoo did a first class job of sewing Lagertha's wrists or she'd have bled out before I even got here. It's your Mum's mind I'm worried about, Bjorn...she's gone utterly bonkers and keeps nattering about wanting to die but your brother won't let her kill herself. Didn't he try to kill her? What's gotten into your mother's head?"   
'I have given up trying to understand my mother," said Bjorn "but I know Ivar. He's spiteful, twisted and cruel because that is what life made him. However, Ivar is clever enough to know that my mother wants to die, so the cruelest thing he can do is keep her alive, and he learned things from his mother that she never taught his brothers. If there was a way for him to lash out at my Mother all the way from Norway he would figure it out."  
"If that's the case," said Sister Peg "then you don't need me you need an exorcist. I'm a midwife and a healer, so I deal with the practical aspects of alleviating human suffering, rather than the more spiritual aspects of Faith. Those two Caledonians that you had might know more about that sort of thing than I do...where are they?"  
"They're taking Bishop Heahmund to Cappadocia to be walled up in a cave because after my dear departed wife Snafrid snaffled his balls he realized that his lust and pride had led him down a sinful path, and he decided to become an anchorite."  
Sister Peg let out a sudden, startled snort of laughter. "You've met Bishop Heahmund? Gangly fella with a little beard? Smooth talker? Horny as fuck?"   
Bjorn nodded. "Lagertha captured him on the field of battle. She was a little bit mystified as to why Ivar had brought back a high-ranking member of the Catholic clergy from England, but when he started sweet talking her..." He shuddered. "I had Snafrid snaffle his balls."  
"Well," said Sister Peg "If there was any man who deserved to have his testicles crushed by a pastoral nomad, it would be Bishop Heahmund. I met him on the Walsingham Walk. He was pretty much the only man ever to grab my arse..."  
"You didn't..?" Bjorn asked. "Oh please tell me you didn't..." He chortled, and Peg looked down to her left, then to her right.  
"I don't understand what you're talking about!" said Torvig.  
Sister Peg looked her straight in the eyes. Peg's own eyes were grey-green like dirty window panes, and revealed even less. "There's a reason why they call me the Nasty Nun" she said at last, but would say no more.

In the ensuing month or so, ister Peg was a frequent visitor to Bjorn's villa, and Torvig would sometimes accompany her to and fro from the convent of St. Beatrix By The Potter's Field, an eccentric cluster of hexagonal chambers built around a central domed church built on the edge of what had once been a thriving pottery and brickworks that had provided the bricks for the nunnery and many of the tenements that surrounded it, but which had since been closed and been converted to a cemetery that housed Constantinople's indigent dead. Bjorn had explained to Torvig that he had endowed the convent with a considerable sum of money and asked her to handle this endowment in addition to the revenues from the Varangian Company. Torvig agreed to do so, simply because she needed something constructive to do and she could not stand the company of Bjorn's wives. Thorunn was insufferably polite, but Torvig suspected her of smirking quietly behind her yashmak whenever she spoke, and Bellona would openly grin at Torvig, showing sharp white teeth that were more like those of a seal than of a human and laugh like one of those dolphins she liked to associate with. Torvig was afraid of her and her laughing grey buddies that were not exactly fish and absolutely refused to swim with them, for although they were beautiful and intelligent creatures she knew that they were also ruthless predators. "She could hunt me down and snap my neck if she felt like it" Torvig thought, and idly wondered if red-haired women were the same in bed as red haired men. Jarl Borg had been a difficult man to deal with, but in one respect he had been much better than Bjorn even before Bjorn had gained so much weight. "They're going to start calling him Bjorn Barrelsides," she thought as she watched him shambling about the courtyard with her children. "I don't love him," she thought "In fact, I never did. He loves our children, but..." she remembered a silent little girl with tangled blonde hair. "He loved his other daughter too, and I drove her mother away."  
"You're a whore," said the voice in her mind that sounded like her second husband Erlander. "You're a greedy, selfish bitch who didn't stop to consider the consequences of her actions, and a little girl died because of you!"  
"I didn't kill Bjorn's daughter," Torvig told the voice in her head. "That was the work of his freakish little half brother who pushed her off a bridge, so that she hit her head on a stone and drowned."  
The voice changed to that of her son Guthrum. "Ivar was a child and not responsible for what he did,"said Guthrum. "You're an adult...you should have cared for her as Bjorn did for me. That's what responsible adults do...they care for others rather than thinking only of themselves. When have you EVER laced another person's needs ahead of your own?"  
"I always put your needs ahead of mine, Guthrum...."Torvig said.  
"And now that I'm dead, whose needs do you care for? Those of Bjorn's children?"  
Torvig came to a terrifying realization that she did NOT in fact care for the children she had had with Bjorn as much as she had cared for her first born son.They were beautiful and sweet but they were like someone else's children. Indeed, they were thriving more under the care of Bjorn's two wives and a clever old slave that Bjorn had hired to tutor them, and Lagertha had suddenly taken an interest in her grandchildren that she had not had before her suicide attempt, so they were also under the watchful eye of their grandmother.   
"I don't love my own children," Torvig thought. "And I drove his first wife away and deprived his daughter of her mother purely out of greed and the lust for power. I am in short a terrible human being..."  
"Well, you don't have to be Odin the God of Wisdom to figure that out..." said the voice in her head, which now sounded like Jarl Borg.


	4. 1Take this Waltz, It's Been Dying for Years!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bjorn celebrates the birth of his son, while Torvig is confronted by Snafrid's cousin and great aunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many cultures prefer hogget (a lamb that's a year old) over spring lamb. I do too, but it's hard to find in Canada, and there's only a couple butcher shops in Ottawa that carry haggis...too bad, because it's delicious!  
> Snafrid's little blue hat is of a type traditionally worn in Karelia, where both the actress who played Snafrid and Ghost Eyes's mother came from..in fact, I once saw a photo taken of his Mum in her teens, and Snafrid looks almost exactly like her except that she's blonde and Ghost Eye's Mum had long black braids that she could whip a man to death with if she wanted!  
> "Erastes" Classical Greek term for "old gay man who pays for sex"  
> "Perkale liikanen mustalainen" means "damn dirty Gypsies". The Gypsies had not migrated to Europe at that point, but there might have been a few who had wandered into the Byzantine Empire  
> "Qui bella, qui flave" is mangled Latin for "How beautiful, how golden.."

Bjorn Ironside threw a magnificent party when his son was born. He hired musicians and dancers, invited his business partners and clients and (because many of his guests kept kosher) roasted a yearling lamb rather than the suckling pigs, langoustines and lamprey pies that commonly graced his dinner table. Torvig welcomed this change because she herself was getting tired of pork, langoustines were nothing but oversized mud bugs, and lampreys were really rather disgusting. She had qualms about another dish that was served, made of the sheep's vital organs ground up, mixed with onion, spices and grain and boiled inside the sheep's stomach. This was actually more of a peasant food, but it was Bellona's favorite dish and was served with great ceremony to the young mother who was doing her best to look queenly and dignified despite the fact that she was pale as a lily and had a bag of snow tucked under her skirts due to the fact that her perianum had torn a bit and had had to be sutured. Torvig did not envy her much, and was glad that something had finally taken the wind out of the big bitch's sails. As she headed over to the garden for air, a girl in a blue Saami hat ran past her. For a second, Torvig thought it was the shade of Snafrid back for revenge, until she saw two more girls in double-peaked caps who had the fine dark skin of the Mediterranean, and Torvig remembered that Kyllikylli had started a minor fashion trend among the ladies of the Imperial Court. "I guess that one society's idea of eccentric is another culture's notion of exotic" she thought, and caught a whiff of piney smelling smoke. She saw what looked like a ruined temple to one of the gods that had been worshipped here before the Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the state religion , but had been converted into a garden folly. Someone had lit a fire in the bronze firebowl in front of the altar, and free figures were sitting around it and passing a bong back and forth. As she approached something small, brown and furry lunged at her, chattering and baring its teeth.  
"Nutmeg! Get back here!" snapped the now-familiar voice of Sister Peg. "He doesn't really like big parties, and I need to take my medication." Sister Peg explained.  
"And I'm out there avoiding some depraved old man who thinks I'm a boy," said Kylli, who sat by the fire with Sister Peg. "The last thing I need is an erastes, thank you very much!" She was wearing a blue hat like her cousin had worn, and her customary adornments of various organic materials, but had changed her boots and tunic of bleached reindeer hide for light sandals and a linen chiton in the traditional Greek style that was so thin it would have provoked a riot back in Norway, and did NOT look like a boy. "When I got back to our lavvo I found my brothers engaged in moral turpitude with some of the dancers Bjorn hired for the feast." From somewhere in the garden a breeze that smelled of jasmine and roses carried the sound of orgasmic moaning. Kylli shook her head. "Perkale liikanen Mustalainen!"  
"More like perkale liikanen Suomlainen!" said the third figure, who puffed at the bong and blew a smoke ring before handing it back to Sister Peg. "It generally takes two to engage in moral turpitude!" she added. She was an extremely elderly woman wrapped in a pashima shawl figured with silver thread, and she wore the same amber, wood, ivory and shell jewellery that Kyllikylli did, and also pearls and coral and fossils of extinct creatures that Torvig could not identify.  
"Or twelve people, in the case of my brothers," said Kylli. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. "It really chaps my ass when they do it, 'cos I can't do it myself. That's the price I pay for being the last of seven children fathered on seven sisters on the same day by a seventh son. That must have been a memorable Midsummer's Eve party." She passed the bong to Torvig "though I was not there to witness it, of course!" The cannabis smoke irritated Torvig's lungs, but she managed to avoid coughing and sputtering. "Some people gain their power by not having sex, while others whore themselves for it." The silver glint was back in Kylli's eyes." For a moment, she did indeed look like a boy because she resembled Bjorn's crazy brother Ivar.  
"I don't understand what you're implying," said Torvig....yet at the same time, she did.  
Kylli grinned mirthlessly. Her pupils were dilated from the ganja, and she was a little unsteady on her feet. "Tell me to my face...did you shoot my cousin Snafrid in the back while she was trying to defend your life, your home and your children?" Sparks danced on the tips of Kylli's fingers.  
"No," said Torvig, though the voice in her head that sounded like her second husband added "Well, it wouldn't be the first time you shot someone in the back..."  
"Don't lie to me, bitch...I see dead people..." Kylli hissed.  
"No!" said Torvig "Are you mad?"  
Kylli cocked her head as though listening to someone. "You're a fool and a whore, but I don't think you're a liar. Snafrid's still a bit...confused. She does not remember dying, and follows Bjorn around, perplexed by the fact that he can't see her and that he weeps so much. It's a shame to see someone with such a big heart so unhappy." She drew a heart shaped smoke ring which hovered in the air until a small blue fireball shot through the centre of the heart, whereupon it burst.  
"Bjorn's father taught him that happiness means nothing..." said Torvig.  
"Bjorn's not that bright," said Sister Peg "and as for his father, the best word to describe Ragnar Lothbrook was 'arsehole'." It's a wonder that Bjorn did not turn out the same way...it might be due to my cousin Athelstan's influence." She looked at Torvig with eyes that did not shimmer in the moonlight as Kylli's eyes did, but were both shrewd and compassionate. "You know happiness means something, and you're not happy, are you"  
Torvig shook her head. "Bjorn does not love me anymore..."  
"And do you love him?" asked the crone to Sister Peg's left. The one toke that Torvig had had was making her dizzy, so she sat down. "No," she said "I never did. I only loved my boy Guthrum, and now he's dead."  
Sister Peg stood, and the wind caught her wimple so that it stood up like the wings of a bird and she looked more like a short, chunky Valkyrie than a nun. "I think it's time you learned exactly what it is we do at Saint Beatrix's by the Potter's Field."

The following day, Torvig stared at the sign over the door of St. Beatrix's by the Potter's field, and mused upon the meaning of the name of the place. Sister Peg had told her  
that Beatrix was Latin for "she who does good" and that a "hospital" was a place where sick people were taken care of, but "charity" was something of a mystery to her. From what Peg had told her, it was the Latin word for what the Greeks called Agape, and while she had explained the difference between Eros and Agape and Storge she had forgotten much of that particular conversation aside from the remark that when you got Eros muddled with Storge you ended up with a dreadful play called Oedipus Rex. The door opened, and she walked into a hall the size of Kattegat's Great Hall, only less grandly decorated and really rather noisy. It was full of people, mostly women and children, and a small, nervous man who seemed to be missing his nose was handing out coffee and what looked like day-old pastries. After a moment, Torvig realized that she was staring at him in a rather impolite fashion, and at the same time most of the women and children were staring back at her.  
"It's called tertiary syphilis, Sweetie..." the small man said as he handed her a spanitokopita that was still edible despite being a little burnt. "Don't worry, it can't be spread by non-sexual contact. They call me Vlad the Impaled."  
"Um...why...?" asked Torvig.  
"I used to sell my ass until there was a little incident involving my rear end and a bassoon. It's a good thing, really." He gestured at his face. "Nobody wants to end up like me."  
An old woman had crept up behind Torvig, and started mumbling "Qui bella, qui flave..."  
"She's never been this close to someone with real blonde hair before" Vlad explained. "I'd watch myself in these parts, because blonde wigs are expensive, and that hair is like walking around with your head covered in gold coins. Anyhoo, you must be Torvig.Sister Peg told me to expect you. She's at the back of the hall, treating patients so you might as well have a seat."  
Torvig sat down and nibbled the spanitokopita. The people around her were all plebeians from the tenements around St. Beatrix's...old women, young mothers with their children, one or two who looked as though they were pregnant again, and a few that dressed and behaved like whores. These were a sloppy, threadbare and tired-looking lot, and some of them were so old and manky looking that Torvig wondered why any man would be desperate enough to pay good money to fuck them.  
"They use their bodies to get money to feed and clothe themselves and find a place to sleep," said the voice in Torvig's head. "You basically do the same, so don't judge them!"


	5. The Sisters of Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Torvig learns the meaning of "charitas." Leonard Cohen said it best "Love is not a victory march, it is a cold and broken Hallelujah!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's already been some discussion of the difference between agape and eros on Vikings, but the Hirsts left out storge (familial love) Why do people always forget about storge?  
> In many cultures where wigs were popular, it was not uncommon for women to be attacked and robbed of their hair well into the Victorian era.

Torvig learned in time what "charitas" meant, for in its truest sense it meant love. Not eros, which although it was the stuff of song could also be bought for a price in the streets and brothels of Byzantium, nor even storge, the love that she had felt for Guthrum and which she saw in the faces of tired women who lugged their often squalling and snot-nosed progeny into Saint Beatrix's cavernous hall to be checked over by patient nuns and treated for the many sicknesses of women and children, or the equally powerful affection that led men and women to tend their aging parents with as great as had been shown to them when they had been babes in arms. If anything, Charitas was more like the love of a soldier who sacrifices himself for his comrades, as she learned when a large man suddenly lunged at Torvig from behind on her way home, threw her against a wall and then started divesting her of her money and jewellery. He was in the process of cutting off her hair when Vlad the Impaled came charging out, screaming blue murder. Torvig's assailant had slashed the little man several times with the razor he had used to cut off Torvig's hair before fleeing the scene of the crime, but while Vlad had bled like a stuck pig he survived. "We Dacians are a tough people" he explained. Torvig had seen enough of her attacker to press charges against him, but her jewellery, money and hair were never returned to her and she took the precaution of dressing plainly and covering her hair after that (though with a kerchief rather than he now ultra-fashionable Finnish hat because she truly despised that particular fad). Although her duties still consisted mainly of keeping accounts and sometimes handing out the coffee and the day old pastries from the bakery where Vlad worked (she had learned that in addition to treating Vlad's syphilis the nuns had delivered all of the baker's wife's children and had saved his eldest daughter's life after the stupid girl had gone to an abortionist, though the jacknife butcher himself had been captured, beaten, castrated, tarred and feathered and hanged by an angry mob and the dirtbag who had impregnated the girl had skipped town). Torvig soon learned to appreciate what the nuns did. The nuns fought as hard as shield maidens against implacable foes....disease, hunger, ignorance and prejudice. The streets and tenements around St. Beatrix's were a battlefield without the cries and clashing of swords and the shattering of shields, but it was a battlefield all the same, and the most the combatants could hope for at the end of the day was a cup of valerian tea and maybe a day-old baklava before evening prayers and then retiring to their cell. Yet there was as much heroism and beauty here as there had been among Lagertha's shield maidens, and far less backstabbing and pussying up to Her Royal Majesty. It was not long before Torvig made her decision.

"Bjorn," Torvig said one day at breakfast. "I'm leaving you.  
Bjorn paused briefly in the act of mopping up creamed sardines with a hunk of bread and said "Hanh?"  
"I'm leaving you, Bjorn" she repeated "I'm joining the nuns at Saint Beatrix by the Potter's Field."  
Bjorn continued eating in silence. Thorunn glanced up nervously from her bowl of yogurt, figs and honey, and Lagertha glowered at her from where she sat in the midst of her grandchildren. Like Bjorn, Bellona seemed unconcerned and happily continued chowing down.  
"Will you please stop feeding your fat face and listen to me, Bjorn?" Torvig snapped. "I said I was leaving you. I don't love you anymore...in fact, I never did."  
"I know that," said Bjorn. "In fact, I've always known it. Well, if you want to, you can leave"  
Torvig's jaw dropped.  
"I'm more concerned about your children," said Thorunn. "I was sixteen when you drove me out, and my body hadn't even recovered from my pregnancy and...well, leaving Little Sigi behind was like leaving behind part of my own body even though I knew I could not care for her as I should, but you...." She gestured at Torvig's children who seemed unconcerned that their Mummy was going away.  
"I don't deserve them," said Torvig "but I trust that you will take better care of them than I did of your girl, and maybe you'll let me see them from time to time. I'm sorry for what I did to you, Thorunn. I did it because Erlander wanted me to do it to get close to Bjorn."  
"And then you shot your husband in the back," said Thorunn. "One ill turn deserves another!"  
"And really," said Torvig "if anyone knew what a little bastard Ivar was, they would not have let him play with your daughter by the riverbank unsupervised."  
"True," Thorunn said. "And yes, I will take care of your children, Torvig. Taking care of other people's children is something I'm very good at." She poured a cup of coffee and sipped it. "It's sort of ironic, because giving birth to Little Sigi messed up my lady parts so I can't have any more children of my own."  
Bjorn reached over and stroked his first wife's back. "We all sometimes have to leave part of ourselves behind to become greater than we were. Aethelstan left his monastery. Mother left Father. Thorunn left me and Sigi because of you, and I left to come here and I found her again and a whole lot more." He gestured about. "People leave, and even when they come back they're not always the same person. In fact, you were a different person when I returned to Kattegat."  
"Then why did you continue to...fuck me?"  
"I am a despicable lecher," said Bjorn. "Just like my Father I also felt bad for what Father and I did to your first husband and to you. I also wanted Guthrum to have a father. I loved him..."  
Lagertha shot her son an alarmed look, but relaxed as Bjorn continued to speak "...though not as Earl Sigvard claimed to love me."  
"That man was a pervert and a world class piece of shit," she said "and I would have blinded him a lot sooner had I known what he wanted to do to you!"  
"Anyway, said Bjorn "I loved Guthrum because he needed a father, and I had failed miserably as a father to my own child. I was far too young to be a father when she was born. I failed Guthrum, too..." He buried his face in his hands and started to sob. "Just leave, if you want." he added at last. "I think I have to atone for another needless death now!" At this point, Lagertha stopped toying with her soft-boiled egg and snapped. "Did you kill his other wife?"  
"What?" asked Torvig.  
"You heard me," said Lagertha. "I didn't like the Saami slut either, but I arranged the marriage for political reasons, and she made Bjorn happier than you did. He always says that happiness is worthless, but HIS happiness matters to me!"  
"Um," said Torvig "I didn't..."  
"Don't lie to ME you little cunt," Lagertha snarled. "It would not be the first time you've shot someone in the back!"  
"Mother!" said Bjorn "The children should not hear this!"  
"Shut up, Bjorn!" his mother snapped as Thorunn got up and hastily led Bjorn's children out of the room with Bellona's help. "I should have gutted this whore back when you first started fucking her. Hell, I should have at least suspected something when she started pussying up to me...but those big, blue eyes and that long, blonde hair of hers got me hooked, and like the dim-witted hog farmer's wife that I am, I trusted her." She grabbed her son's plaits and yanked. "For Frig's sake, Bjorn...grow a backbone for once in your life! Torvig is a lamprey and a murderous little cunt!" She rounded on Torvig again, then stopped. "You've changed, though..." she said. "What happened? You're not simpering and placated and pussing up as you always do..."  
"I grew a backbone," said Torvig "and a heart. I'm not a whore anymore, and I did not kill Snafrid. I'm going now. Then on impulse she added a Greek phrase that she had learned from the nuns of Saint Beatrix's. "Kyrie eleison!"  
Bjorn clasped his hands and answered "Christos eleison!" as Torvig curtsied and left the room.  
Lagertha sat down with a look of shock on her face. "First Ragnar and Rollo, then Bjorn, and now Torvig. If anyone else converts to Christianity there won't be anyone left to fight at Ragnarok!"


End file.
